Control of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party changed hands for the first time in eight years this weekend.

The Democratic State Committee elected a new chairman, Pittsburgh lawyer Jim Burn, as the sun sets on the Rendell era and the Republican Party vigorously campaigns to reclaim the governorship and an open U.S. Senate seat.

Today’s leadership shake-up did not come without a fair amount of behind-the-scenes drama, dealmaking and uncertainty over who was in charge. The top-of-the-ticket Democratic candidates — Dan Onorato for governor and Joe Sestak for Senate — said they studiously avoided taking sides prior to the vote.

Certainly the process was not as well-tuned as the one Gov. Ed Rendell orchestrated in the weeks after his 2002 victory over Bob Casey in a bitter primary battle. Back then, the incumbent chairwoman was quietly persuaded to drop her plans for seeking another term, the state committee rubber-stamped her Rendell-endorsed replacement, and that was that.

As the outgoing chairman’s term neared its end this year, Rendell proposed to party leaders that the well-regarded T.J. Rooney, a former Bethlehem area state representative, be permitted to stay on through the November election.

But other candidates were eager to take the party’s helm at a time it enjoys a 1.2 million-voter registration edge over the GOP — particularly Burn, the leader of the Allegheny County Democrats, who has been friends with Onorato since they attended Pittsburgh’s North Catholic High School in the 1970s and who had nailed down support from key party insiders.

In the end, the talks collapsed and Burn’s prospective challengers — Montgomery County lawyer Marcel Groen and Armstrong County lawyer Chuck Pascal — wound up endorsing him today.

Asked what made him decide to drop out of the race, Groen said he simply didn’t have the votes.

"I can count," he said.

"So can the other guy," quipped U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, "and he doesn’t have to count as high."

Brady, also the party’s Philadelphia chairman, helped broker the negotiations. He said it’s the nature of Democrats to argue.

"We have our family squabbles and we all come together or we'll come together tomorrow," he said.

Onorato, the elected executive of Allegheny County governor, appeared at a state committee dinner Friday night and urged unity.

"The battle is ahead of us," he said. "We know it’s going to be a tough fight, but we also know this race is very winnable."

Sestak, a second-term congressman who ousted Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter in the primary, made the rounds at smaller caucus meetings this morning before the state committee vote.

In an interview interrupted repeatedly by greetings from well-wishers, Sestak said he personally would have liked to elect a woman as the party’s leader, but did not want to interfere in the selection process.

"At the end of the day, whomever they select is fine, and we move on from here," he said.

As the likelihood of Burn’s victory became obvious, Onorato acknowledged with a grin that ‘it wouldn’t be a problem for me.” But he insisted that he did not engineer Burn’s election.

Brady said he was not surprised by Onorato’s and Sestak’s hands-off policy.

"Everybody in the room is for them," he said. "Why would they want to get involved and get somebody mad at them?"